


What happens in the library

by InNately



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale ricochets between very clueless and very horny and I’m not even sorry about it, Clueless Aziraphale (Good Omens), Experienced Crowley (Good Omens), First Time, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Monks, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Paperthin Plot, snogging in the stacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-04 03:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21190610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InNately/pseuds/InNately
Summary: Aziraphale was just trying to read, really. But then temptation showed up in the form of a very pretty demon.





	What happens in the library

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I'd say they’re not behaving perfectly in character here but I had a _fantasy_ and it demanded to be _written_. I think it works best if it’s framed as a fantasy Aziraphale would have had about Crowley around the 15th century or so, but do what makes you happy. 
> 
> Also, disclaimer, I did not do any research for this fic but I have read _The Name of the Rose_ if that counts??

The library at night was Aziraphale’s favourite place in the monastery. 

He knew he should prefer the chapel or some other, holier area, but the library was where he felt closest to godliness. And his nightly vigils here, when the rest of the monks were catching precious hours of sleep between compline and matins, were his most cherished moments. The daytime library was full of pious scholars who tried to keep a reverent silence, but who nonetheless produced a steady stream of sounds—shuffling papers, scratching quills, stifled coughs, mutterings—that Aziraphale found tremendously distracting. The nocturnal library was much to be preferred, for it was all his own.

Except, it seemed, for tonight. 

Aziraphale’s attention was yanked from the manuscript on the table in front of him by an increasingly conspicuous series of noises from a few stacks away. His eyebrows drew together as his mouth settled into what could be called a scowl, if one were feeling generous, or a pout, if one were not.

He could hear muffled voices, shuffling feet, and was that—a giggle? Aziraphale was truly irritated now; it was one thing if some monk had awoken with an urgent need to track down a particular scholarly tract or holy treatise, but what he was hearing now sounded positively like _fraternizing_. He could see the glow of the offenders’ candle a few rows over, and grabbing his book, he headed towards it, his eyes blazing.

Rounding the corner of the shelves, though, he stopped abruptly, taken aback. It was two monks and they were, indeed, fraternizing. Or certainly headed that way, at least. He could see one of the men clearly—a youngish blond by the name of Thomas, who was backed up against a bookcase. His innocent blue eyes were fixed on the other, whose face lay in shadow from where Aziraphale stood. This other had Thomas practically pinned, with one arm braced against the shelf beside his head and the other hand resting suggestively on Thomas’s . . . well, it might have been his low back—it was hard to tell through their robes—but Aziraphale, blushing, thought it was likely rather lower.

Aziraphale fully intended to interrupt this spectacle, he really did. But his voice had rather abandoned him, and instead he found himself staring transfixed as the other monk pulled his body flush against Thomas’s and buried his face in Thomas’s neck, seeming, based on the young monk’s expression, to be doing rather lovely things there. 

At this point, several things happened in Aziraphale’s head at once. For one, part of his mind seemed to be short-circuiting over what he was seeing. He knew in theory, of course, that monks were known to get up to things like this sometimes, but he hadn’t witnessed much of it (possibly just because he was usually so focused on his books, but it also didn’t hurt that he radiated a divine presence that typically discouraged sins in the people around him). And in any case, Thomas was just about the last person he would have expected this from; as far as Aziraphale knew, Thomas was a perfectly devout and happy servant of God, who really had no business straying from the path like this.

Secondly, the other monk appeared to be a stranger. Aziraphale couldn’t see his face, since it was fully occupied at the moment, but the man’s habit wasn't right; it was black, and hung with a silky elegance that proper ones did not. Whoever he was, he didn’t belong here.

And finally, worst of all, Aziraphale discovered to his horror that he was _enjoying_ this. It was exciting to see these two men, well, _sinning_ together, and Aziraphale found himself growing jealous of the flush creeping over Thomas’s face as the other monk kissed and nibbled up his neck. It didn’t make any _ sense_, he thought frantically, unable to look away. Angels weren’t supposed to feel sexual desires, and Aziraphale was no exception most of the time, though he had been known to entertain certain less-than-platonic thoughts, maybe bordering on openly salacious, but they had never felt this strong before, and anyway they only ever manifested themselves when he was around-

And it clicked. Aziraphale gasped, his book falling to the floor with a thud that caused the mysterious “monk” to pull away from Thomas’s chest as both their heads spun in Aziraphale’s direction. 

“_Aziraphale?_” Crowley gaped. Aziraphale gaped back. Thomas gaped at them both, briefly, before Crowley snapped out of his astonishment enough to miracle him into a blank stupor.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, wincing, “that was unkind.”

“_Unkind?_” Crowley repeated, incredulous. “I’m a demon, I’m not meant to care about _kind_.”

“Right, of course, silly of me.” Aziraphale attempted a disarming smile. It didn’t seem to work. He felt a little faint; he couldn’t stop staring at Crowley’s lips, which were red and swollen with kisses. Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably, trying and failing to control his thoughts.

After a long moment, the demon broke the silence. “So are you here to thwart my wiles?” he asked, smiling wryly.

“What?” asked Aziraphale, a little breathless. “Oh, no, nothing like that! I’ve been living in this monastery for a couple of years now; it was entirely an accident that I, er, interrupted your-“ he gestured helplessly, trying to find a neutral word, “-your work.” He paused, suddenly worried. “Or- Or I assume this was work?”

That earned him an extremely exasperated look from Crowley. “No, I just go about seducing virgin humans for my own pleasure. Of _course_ I’m on assignment.”

“Oh. Yes, silly question, I suppose,” Aziraphale muttered, feeling, of all things, _relieved_. What a stupid thing to feel! “Were you assigned to _him_ in particular, then?” He gestured at Thomas, who was still standing blank and unresponsive where Crowley had left him.

“Nah, they just told me to get up here and make some trouble. You know, pick a monk and start inciting lusssst.”

Aziraphale couldn’t stifle a slightly manic laugh at that. He’d heard Crowley hiss before, plenty of times, and been practically unaffected, but now he found himself completely transfixed by the idea of that slippery serpent tongue-

“Are you _alright_, angel?” Crowley looked- worried? Confused? Hard to tell, in the candlelight.

“Yes!” Aziraphale squeaked, too quickly. “Of course I’m alright!” Crowley appeared unconvinced.

Aziraphale tried to get a grip on his thoughts. It wasn’t as if these feelings were new, but being ambushed, as it were, by the sight of Crowley at work, tempting . . . it was apparently enough to push him over an edge of some kind, to break down a wall he hardly realized he'd built. He felt powerless against the words that were beginning to tumble out of his mouth. 

“Well, I was just thinking.” Aziraphale paused, trying to steady himself and failing. “I- I know the people Down There won’t rest until you’ve completed your assignment.”

“Ye-es,” Crowley drawled, giving him a curious look.

Aziraphale couldn’t believe what he was about to say, could still barely believe he was even considering it, but- “Well, I’m a monk, currently. Could I volunteer?”

Aziraphale had never seen Crowley so well and truly surprised. 

“Could you _what?_”

Aziraphale glanced upward, out of habit, but he didn’t think any divine wisdom would help him now. “Well,” he began. “You see.” He sighed, but there was no stopping now. “Well, ah, I was thinking that, since part of _my_ duties involves trying to- to preserve human souls from . . . tainting-“ (Crowley’s mouth twitched into a grimace at the choice of words) “-that it would only make _sense_, really, for me to offer my own, ah, virtue in place of a human’s. That way, you get to tell Downstairs that you’ve done the job, and no actual human soul is any worse for wear,” he finished, feeling rather pleased that he’d managed to make it all sound so _reasonable_. Because he wasn’t feeling reasonable at all.

Crowley kept staring. And staring. It was practically unbearable. Shouldn’t Crowley be leaping at this chance? Aziraphale was sure Crowley must have been expecting this, had even been angling to get the angel into bed for centuries, what with those _hips_ and that _hair_ and the steady stream of desire Aziraphale could always feel coming off him, but he was almost starting to think he might have misjudged . . .

“Would you _ say_ something, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, too flustered to be patient.

Crowley seemed to jerk back to life. “You- you want to offer me your _virtue_,” he said, transforming the word into a sneer, “as a sweet, selfless sacrifice for the good of humanity, is that right?” He sounded disgusted, which was not, strictly speaking, the reaction Aziraphale had been _hoping_ for. 

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Aziraphale said, hedging, “but yes, that’s the general idea.”

Something shifted in Crowley then, and the disgust on his face was rapidly shuttered away and replaced with something very, very different. He took one step towards Aziraphale, then another, slow and almost predatory. His new expression was questioning, maybe, and a little bit hungry. Aziraphale shivered, not unpleasantly. This was more in line with what he’d been expecting.

“Well, angel, the thing is.” Crowley stopped, a tantalizing few inches away. He peered at Aziraphale over the top of his glasses, his eyes blazing with emotions that Aziraphale couldn’t quite make sense of. Aziraphale listened, enraptured, as he continued, his low, sultry voice practically purring, “The thing you have to understand about a good temptation is.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper, and Aziraphale found himself shifting forward to hear him better, which was no doubt exactly what was intended. “It only works if they want to be tempted in the first place. I never force them to do anything. I might plant some ideas, present some options, but in the end they have to make a _choice_. They have to _want_ to be seduced.” And then his expression transformed again, and a tight, pained smile replaced the suggestive smoulder he’d been sporting. “So your whole _noble sacrifice_ gambit is a no-go.” Crowley took a step back, putting a more customary distance between them and crossing his arms with an air of finality.

Aziraphale’s throat was dry as bone. Crowley didn’t understand; he had to make him understand, even if it meant voicing a truth he’d been running from for centuries.

“But what if I do want it?” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

“What if you want what?” Crowley was looking off down the row of books with an air of preoccupation. 

Aziraphale mustered his courage. 

“You. Here. Up against this bookcase,” he said, voice surprisingly steady.

Crowley’s head snapped around to look at Aziraphale, and he made a noise that might have been a muffled laugh, or a groan, or a whimper. “Now that,” he said slowly, “is a very dangerous thing to say to a demon. What if I took you at your word?”

“Please do.” Aziraphale felt unexpectedly serene; his desire was out in the open, now, and it was too late to take it back.

Crowley was staring at him again. Aziraphale could feel the piercing gold of his gaze, even through the glasses. 

“Who the hell are you and what have you done with my angel?” was what Crowley finally said, sounding bemused.

“Your angel,” Aziraphale echoed, and Crowley- blushed? “You’re right, it’s what I am, what I- what I always have been, I think.” 

But Crowley was shaking his head in disbelief. “But- Where are you getting all this? When did it _start_? If this is some passing fancy, I don’t-” He stopped himself abruptly.

“I, er, don’t know that I could say, really,” said Aziraphale, hesitating. “But- what I will say is this: if the only reason you turned down my, er, offer,“ he continued, “is that you thought I was _unwilling_, I would beg you to reconsider.”

Crowley groaned and looked upwards (in supplication? To whom?). He seemed to be fighting some kind of internal battle, but finally he removed his glasses and stepped in close again. “It is extremely important that you are honest with me right now. Do you want this? _Really_ want this?”

“More than anything,” Aziraphale said quietly, and knew as he said it that it was frighteningly true.

“And there’s nothing I can say that will convince you to just- drop it? Leave it alone? Pretend I was never here?”

Aziraphale hesitated for a moment. “Not- not unless you tell me _you_ don’t want it.” This hadn’t been something Aziraphale had really been worried about, when he’d first made his proposition, but he was suddenly unsure.

“Satan help me. This is not how it was supposed-“ Crowley cut himself off, and before Aziraphale could ask what on Earth he’d meant by that, Crowley had his back up against a bookcase and was kissing him.

And _oh_. Nothing else in the world mattered now. Crowley’s mouth was hungry, seeking after something Aziraphale didn’t know how to give but would try to offer up anyway. He felt his mouth open for Crowley’s tongue as Crowley’s hands tangled themselves in his curls, and he moaned, a broken sound that he could scarcely believe was coming from his own mouth.

Crowley seemed to like it, though; Aziraphale felt a shudder go through the demon’s body at the sound, and his fingers tightened in the angel’s hair, yanking his head back sharply. It should have been unpleasant, some part of Aziraphale’s mind thought distantly, but instead it left him weak-kneed with wanting. 

He lost track of time for a bit. When he came to, he found his hands were tugging frantically at Crowley’s robes, trying to find their way through to-

“Oh!” Aziraphale gasped as his hands found what they had apparently been seeking and grabbed on fiercely, and Crowley keened. 

“_Angel_,” he panted, “give a demon a little warning, next time.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said hoarsely, a little distracted by the mention of a _next time_. “Should I, er, let go then?”

“_No_,” Crowley answered instantly. “No, just- here.” And Aziraphale felt a hand cover his and guide him into a slow, firm stroking motion. Which seemed to work quite nicely, judging by the moans it drew from Crowley. 

Aziraphale was feeling rather pleased with himself, and was distracted from his own increasingly insistent hardness by the spectacle of Crowley beginning to fall apart under his hands. And then he became even more thoroughly distracted when he caught sight of the figure that was still standing a few feet away, staring vacantly in their direction.

“Oh my goodness!” Aziraphale exclaimed, his eyes widening as he dropped his hands to his sides and backed away from Crowley (inasmuch as this was possible, given that he was backed up against a bookcase).

Crowley made a bereaved, confused noise, before following Aziraphale’s gaze and noticing the young monk he’d miracled into a stupor. Crowley frowned at him for a long moment, concentrating, then he snapped his fingers and the monk vanished with a pop.

“There, no harm done, I've sent him back to his cell. Or- well I think I have, anyway. Wherever he is, he doesn’t remember anything from tonight, I’m sure about that.”

Aziraphale let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Thank you, my dear.” 

“Don’t mention it, angel,” Crowley muttered, ducking his head. Aziraphale couldn’t help but smile at the idea that the demon would be embarrassed by a simple thank-you, when they’d been in the middle of something much more intimate.

Speaking of which, now that they were properly alone, Aziraphale rather wanted to pick up where they’d left off.

He reached up, almost shy, and placed a hand on Crowley’s chin, gently guiding the demon’s face back toward his. 

“Well, now that that’s taken care of . . .” he trailed off, raising an eyebrow in a way he hoped was suggestive.

Crowley was silent for a moment. “Then you still want-?” he began, tentatively.

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale murmured eagerly, caressing the front of Crowley’s habit.

“I thought maybe you’d have changed your mind, what with the interruption and everything,” Crowley confessed, sheepish.

“Oh no,” Aziraphale said, standing on his toes to bring his mouth towards Crowley’s again.

“Are you going to use words properly, or has your entire vocabulary-“ 

“Hush,” Aziraphale interrupted, and felt Crowley’s anxiety begin to melt away as the angel kissed him into silence. 

Everything became a bit of a blur from there, at least in the moment; Aziraphale found, later, that certain sensations would become fixed irrevocably in his memory. The feeling of a hand on his belly, just below his navel (where he’d never known his skin was so exquisitely sensitive). The tang of sweat licked from Crowley’s skin (for now he knew that Crowley was salty as the sea, but with an undercurrent of earthy spice that was inimitably _Crowley_; he was cursed with this knowledge forever, would never be able to un-know it).

And likewise he would never be able to unhear the sweet, hastily bitten-off words that were wrenched from Crowley’s lips as they moved together: “Yes, finally, my angel, my lo-“

If Crowley elected to assume that Aziraphale was too overcome with passion to have heard this, Aziraphale certainly wasn't going to disabuse him; some truths were too much to face at once, even on a night as wild and strange as this one.

So Aziraphale put that out of his mind and focused instead on the gorgeously glazed look that came over Crowley’s eyes (his glasses were gone, Aziraphale had no idea when or where) as he came, taking Aziraphale with him. 

Aziraphale did not know how long they lay on the floor in a tangled heap of limbs and robes. (He didn’t even remember ending up on the floor, for that matter.) They rested there, with their foreheads together, and one of Crowley’s hands ensnared in the short curls at the nape of Aziraphale’s neck. 

The demon was completely still; he didn’t even seem to be breathing. A niggling thought came into Aziraphale’s mind: _He won’t move until you do. He wants this to last forever_. 

And, well, Aziraphale couldn’t blame him, but . . .

“Crowley,” he whispered pulling away slightly. Crowley’s eyes fluttered open, and for a moment they were filled with such unalloyed, unconcealed adoration that Aziraphale’s heart nearly burst. Then the spell of the moment was broken, and his expression was shuttered away behind a more customary smirk—fond, still, but with a sly, teasing edge.

“Well, angel,” he drawled, disentangling his limbs from Aziraphale’s and drawing himself up into a seated position, “are you pleased with yourself?”

Aziraphale allowed his face to take on a look of petulant surprise. “_Pleased_ with myself? Whatever for, my dear?” He sat up, too, feigning offence. This was familiar ground, easy to handle.

“Playing coy, are we?” Crowley asked lazily, adjusting his hair and conjuring another pair of glasses from Lord-knew-where. In a few moments there would be hardly a sign that he’d been up to anything unseemly whatsoever. “We both know this wasn’t about saving anyone’s soul. You just couldn’t stand to see me tempt someone without getting a taste for yourself.” He flashed a grin, exaggerated and lewd, at Aziraphale.

The angel rolled his eyes and huffed. “Alright, fine. I was perhaps being . . . mildly disingenuous in saying that concern for Thomas’s soul was the primary reason for what I was suggesting.”

“_Mildly disingenuous?_ You were flat-out lying! You’re an _angel_, and you made up a lie about wanting to help humanity because you were jealous and full of lust! Now that is a real trifecta of sins, if you ask me.”

“Oh, don’t look so smug.”

“I think smug is exactly what I should be right now.”

“Fine, yes, congratulations, after several thousand years you finally managed to get the most hedonistic angel on God’s green earth to indulge in yet another sin of the flesh,” Aziraphale retorted hotly, though the affection in his voice was impossible to conceal.

There was a pause, then, in which neither of them seemed to know quite what to say. Crowley studied his fingernails, too nonchalantly, while Aziraphale adjusted his robes and tried to smooth his curls back into a respectable shape.

“Should we . . . do this again, sometime?” Crowley asked, breaking the silence.

Aziraphale smiled weakly at him. “No,” he said, and Crowley looked crestfallen for a moment before Aziraphale continued, “We shouldn’t, but I dare say that won’t stop us.” The look of relief on Crowley’s face was heartwarming, and Aziraphale felt a sudden, unbidden conviction that he would be willing to do just about anything in the universe to keep Crowley looking so very happy. 

Well, time would tell.

**Author's Note:**

> Always a little tricky to write a satisfying happy ending to a pre-Apocalypse fic, since we all know what dreadful things Aziraphale will say to Crowley at the band stand, and in the Bentley, and in St. James’s Park, and all over really. But I hope you liked it anyway! Comments, kudos, and constructive criticism are always appreciated; I’m pretty new to writing fic as an Adult Who Then Shares It On The Internet, as opposed to my old days of being a Preteen Who Burns It Before Anyone Sees.


End file.
